Are You in Control of Your Processes?

What is the purpose of a procedure? To decrease variability? To ensure product and process consistency? As you decrease process variability, you increase process control. Management needs control: management control, process control, internal controls, and controlled outputs.

Policies and procedures help provide the controls that management wants and that regulators or auditors demand. Control is also a crucial element of corporate governance. Do you know the three types of processes that exhibit control?

What Types of Processes Exhibit Control?

The three types of processes that exhibit control are ballistic processes, controlled processes, and adaptive processes. A ballistic process runs without enough feedback to correct variation. A controlled process monitors inputs and outputs, then changes the process to produce an expected output. An adaptive process goes further: it learns from accumulated evidence and changes over time to improve effectiveness.

That distinction matters because a procedure is not just paperwork. A process is what people do, while a procedure is a description of what people do. Written procedures give managers a way to set expectations, observe variance, and decide whether the problem is the process, the system, or the assumptions behind both.

Why Does Compliance Increase the Need for Control?

The need for compliance only increases. It rarely decreases, does it? Accounting procedures are required by regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley because organizations must be able to support financial statements, approvals, and reporting practices with reliable evidence. The SEC rule on internal control over financial reporting is a useful reminder that management is expected to evaluate and document controls, not merely hope they exist.

In manufacturing and in services, certain procedures are required for ISO 9001 quality conformance. The FDA and European regulators also expect documented good practices in regulated environments. Compliance is a result, not a cause. To understand why organizations need procedures, you need to ask what needs to be in control.

Processes, Procedures, and Control

A written procedure helps management move from opinion to observation. It describes the expected way work should happen, then gives supervisors and employees a common reference for checking whether the work is stable, repeatable, and producing the expected output.

This is where well-defined processes begin to matter. If a process cannot be observed, measured, or corrected, then the organization has little real control. If it can be observed and corrected, management can improve the process rather than blaming people for every variation in output.

What Are Ballistic Processes?

A ballistic process is the most common of the three types of processes and the least useful. It is a process that cannot be controlled and cannot produce consistent results. A simple example is testing golf balls by having a person hit each ball. A person cannot strike the ball in exactly the same way every time, so equipment makers use robots for testing when repeatability matters.

Any process that does not provide adequate feedback to correct problems and gain consistency is a ballistic process. Ballistic processes do not have process control. They may still produce occasional good outcomes, but those outcomes are not reliable enough to plan around.

Perhaps you have seen a ballistic process in the educational system. Teachers present material in the way they want. If you do not understand the material, that becomes your problem. Results of this process include tutoring, students falling behind, students losing interest, and students leaving the system. You know there is a better way.

How Ballistic Processes Show Up in Business

In business, ballistic processes show up as undocumented handoffs, inconsistent approvals, informal training, and departments that depend on one person remembering how the work is supposed to happen. The process exists, but it is not under control. People compensate with effort, reminders, and workarounds. That effort can keep the business moving for a while, but it does not create predictable output.

What Are Controlled Processes?

A controlled process is different. When we talk about control, we do not mean dominance or power. Process control means that the inputs of the system are manipulated or transformed to realize an expected output. The key is monitoring inputs and outputs, then making corrective changes to the process based on what you have observed.

Control charts and similar methods help teams distinguish normal process variation from signals that require action. For example, the National Library of Medicine describes control charts as a way to monitor process variation and understand whether changes are likely due to common causes or special causes in a system. That is the heart of process control: observe variation before deciding what to change.

In a controlled classroom process, the teacher presents the material, then checks the students’ understanding. If students are not transforming the material into knowledge as expected, the teacher takes corrective action to fix the process, not the students. Expectations based on past performance help frame which changes are reasonable.

Control Depends on Feedback

The controlled process involves making adjustments to the process to compensate for variance in behavior, demand, skill, inputs, or environment. The ballistic process requires people to adjust their behavior to compensate for the process problem. That is why controlled processes are harder to create, but more useful. They ask management to understand what is expected and what changes to make.

The same logic applies to procedures. A procedure that merely records the current habit may describe a ballistic process. A procedure that defines inputs, outputs, responsibilities, review points, and corrective action can support a controlled process. That is the difference between writing down work and designing work.

What Are Adaptive Processes?

The ultimate process is one that learns. An adaptive process can change over time to improve effectiveness. The idea behind this type of process is to review the changes being made to compensate for variance and ask whether the larger system should change.

• Are the right changes being made?
• Are enough changes being made?
• How has the environment changed?
• What new data changes the expected output?
• Which assumptions behind the procedure are now outdated?

Step back and look beyond the process. Perhaps the learning methods employed are twenty years old, or the technology supporting the process has changed. Perhaps the procedure was written for a smaller company, a different regulatory environment, or a different customer expectation.

Over time, with enough input data and enough process changes, an organization can reach the limit of a process’s effectiveness. Changes become so incremental that the effort required to change is not worth the diminishing level of returns. In that case, it is time to adapt, or evolve to a new state.

Adaptive Processes Improve the System

Adaptive processes do not chase change for its own sake. They use evidence to decide whether the current method is still the right method. Going back to the classroom example, this may mean a complete course redesign rather than another corrective action inside the existing lesson plan.

Businesses face the same choice. A purchasing approval process might be controlled, but still too slow for a distributed company. A month-end close procedure might produce accurate outputs, but still depend on manual reconciliations that no longer fit the volume of transactions. The adaptive question is not only whether the process is in control. It is whether the controlled process is still the right process.

How Do Management Systems Create Control?

Procedures provide control, but what kind? Organizations are groups of systems, all of which require system controls. A ballistic process is about motion without enough feedback. A controlled process is about achieving an expected outcome. The adaptive process is about the future: achieving an expected vision for your organization and delivering the ultimate control management is really seeking.

Management systems connect policies, procedures, objectives, reviews, audits, training, and corrective action. That connection is why effective management systems matter. If procedures sit apart from objectives and data, they become documents. If they connect to measurement and review, they become controls.

What Types of Processes Do Your Written Procedures Describe?

We have been talking about control because it is one of the main reasons organizations develop procedures. Management needs to take control of a bad situation, improve control over inconsistent work, or prove control to auditors and regulators. Historically, many procedures only described existing processes. In other words, they documented ballistic processes.

To improve the process, management must understand the system, expected outcomes, and the data describing the process. Written procedures should clarify who does the work, what input starts the work, what output proves the work is complete, what standards define acceptability, and what feedback triggers corrective action.

Ask a simple question during your next procedure review: does this document describe a ballistic process, a controlled process, or an adaptive process? If the answer is ballistic, the procedure may be documenting activity without creating control. If the answer is controlled, the procedure should show how feedback drives corrective action. If the answer is adaptive, the procedure should also show how the organization learns when the process itself needs to change.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Types of Processes Exhibit Control?

The three types of processes that exhibit control are ballistic processes, controlled processes, and adaptive processes. Ballistic processes have little useful feedback, controlled processes use feedback to produce expected outputs, and adaptive processes learn over time.

What Is a Ballistic Process?

A ballistic process is a process that runs without enough feedback to correct variation. It may produce results, but the output is inconsistent and difficult to manage.

What Is a Controlled Process?

A controlled process monitors inputs, outputs, and variation, then changes the process to achieve an expected output. It focuses corrective action on the process rather than blaming people for every problem.

What Is an Adaptive Process?

An adaptive process uses evidence from repeated process changes to decide whether the larger system should evolve. It is controlled, but it also learns when the current method no longer fits the goal.

Why Do Written Procedures Improve Process Control?

Written procedures improve process control by defining expectations, responsibilities, inputs, outputs, and review points. They give managers and employees a common reference for detecting variation and taking corrective action.